Background
George Scratchley Brown was born on August 17, 1918 in Montclair, New Jersey. He was the son of Thoburn Kaye Brown, a career army officer, and Frances Katherine Scratchley. Brown and a younger brother Tim grew up on various army bases.
(Excerpt from Yarmouth, Nova Scotia: A Sequel to Campbell'...)
Excerpt from Yarmouth, Nova Scotia: A Sequel to Campbell's History There is extant a copy of A History of the County of Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, by the Rev. J. R. Campbell, pub lished in 1876, where, beneath the printed testimonial preceding its titlepage, occur these words over the date of Sept. 2, 1885 When this book was first offered to the public,i somewhat hastily passed over its pages; and then, and at other times since, it seemed to me strange that so many inaccuracies should have escaped the critical notice of the gentlemen whose names are attached to the above testimonial. But having more carefully examined the book within the past week, I have taken the liberty of making some marginal notes where it seemed to be of some importance that the errors in the text should be corrected. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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George Scratchley Brown was born on August 17, 1918 in Montclair, New Jersey. He was the son of Thoburn Kaye Brown, a career army officer, and Frances Katherine Scratchley. Brown and a younger brother Tim grew up on various army bases.
Brown graduated from Immaculata High School, Leavenworth, Kansas, in June 1936, spent a year at the University of Missouri (1936 - 1937), then transferred to West Point (1937 - 1941). Brown graduated on June 11, 1941, earning a B. S. degree and a commission as a second lieutenant.
In his senior year George Brown was appointed cadet captain and regimental adjutant, distinctions that placed him among the five top cadet officers in the corps.
After graduation from the University of West Point, Brown selected the Air Corps as his base branch of the service. On August 20, 1941, he began training, receiving his wings on March 7, 1942, and completing his instruction in August. He departed for the European Theater on September 1, 1942, with the 329th Bomb Squadron, 93d Group. He flew twenty-five missions from England, then transferred to the Italian front.
In February 1943 he was promoted to major, and the following September, he became a lieutenant colonel. The latter promotion was due largely to his performance in one of the most celebrated raids of World War II. On August 1, 1943, in his plane, Queenie, Brown took part in a low-altitude raid over the oil fields at Ploesti, Romania, part of a series of Allied bombings launched from Italy against the main railway traffic centers in eastern Europe, in the battle to liberate the Russian homeland.
The Ploesti raid changed the nature of Allied bombing policy. Oil fields became prime military objectives for both the British and the Americans. Also, where up to this point most air raids involved area bombing, the Ploesti raid proved the value of low-altitude, surgical bombing of strategic targets. This new method was adopted by Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder in Operation Overlord. Brown returned to the United States in November 1944. That December, he was promoted to colonel, only three years and two months after his graduation from West Point.
After a series of assignments at various posts, on July 1, 1947, he was appointed assistant chief of staff for operations, Air Defense Command Headquarters. This assignment brought Brown to Washington, D. C. , for the first time. He spent much time at the Pentagon, getting plans approved and then going to Congress for the funding.
In 1949, when the Air Defense Command became the Continental Air Command, Brown was charged with developing a new air strategy, designed to meet the increasing Soviet atomic threat. From July 1951 to April 1952, Brown served at Selfridge Air Force Base, Michigan, and from May 1952 to June 1953 he was with the Fifth Air Force in Korea, where he was director of operations, planning and supervising combat missions and coordinating them with the other services and other national forces.
After serving as commander of the 3, 525th Pilot Training Wing at Williams Air Force Base, Arizona (July 1953 - July 1956), Brown was sent to the National War College in Washington, D. C. (August 1956 - June 1957). From July 1957 to June 1959, Brown served as executive officer to the air force chief of staff, General Thomas D. White; he next was appointed military assistant to Deputy Secretary of Defense Thomas S. Gates, Jr. (June 1959 - August 1961).
When Gates became secretary of defense on August 1, 1959, Brown was promoted to brigadier general. Gates established the Integrated Targeting Strategic Plan, which was set up under the Strategic Air Command in Omaha, Nebraska, to coordinate the strategic missile systems of the navy and air force. Brown demonstrated his ability to reconcile conflicting interests in the Pentagon when disagreements occurred between the chief of naval operations, Admiral Arleigh Burke, and the air force chief of staff, General Nathan Twining.
In 1961, Gates was succeeded as defense secretary by Robert McNamara. Brown became McNamara's air force assistant and was promoted to major general. McNamara was hated by much of the military brass, and Brown became an effective buffer between the Defense Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
After six years in Washington, D. C. , Brown was transferred in August 1963 to McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey, to assume command of the Eastern Transport Air Force, a component of the Military Air Transport Service, which was converting to an all-jet service. It was the largest command Brown had held up to that time. He was responsible for all air operations between the Mississippi River and the western border of India, and all airlifts to Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.
From September 1964 to May 1966, Brown was at Sanchez, N. Mexico. On May 1, 1966, Brown was appointed assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army General Earle G. Wheeler, and promoted to lieutenant general. The Vietnam conflict was ongoing, and Brown was drawn into the tensions between military demands on the one hand and congressional-executive strictures on the other. Two incidents during this period brought the Joint Chiefs of Staff under fire.
The Liberty incident occurred in June 1967, when the American reconnaissance ship Liberty entered the war zone off the Egyptian coast and was bornbed by an Israeli plane. The Pueblo incident involved an American intelligence ship that, on January 23, 1968, was seized with its crew of eighty-three by four North Korean patrol boats. President Lyndon Johnson reacted instantly, ordering 14, 787 air force and navy reservists to report to active duty. Shortly after, the Pueblo was returned to the United States. Questions were raised regarding the joint chiefs' responsibility for the Pueblo's location at the time of its seizure.
In August 1968, Brown was promoted to four-star general and was shipped to Vietnam, to take command of the Seventh Air Force, as deputy commander of all air operations there. He remained in Vietnam until August 1970. In September 1970, Brown came to national attention when he became commander of the Air Force Systems Command Headquarters, at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, a position that required him to perform, among other duties, a considerable amount of public relations. He quickly proved himself a superb speaker and an excellent debater whose public addresses were often quoted, excerpted, and reprinted in the national press.
In August 1973, Brown became air force chief of staff. In October 1973, during the Yom Kippur War, Brown assigned Major General George F. Keegan the responsibility of handling the crisis.
In July 1974, Brown was promoted to chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. He brought to this job a deep conviction of the need for increased defense expenditures to back up the United States policy of détente. But his tenure as chairman was marred by controversy.
On October 10, 1974, a year after the Yom Kippur War, Brown, answering a question from the audience after a speech at Duke University Law School, condemned the influence of Israel on Congress and the American Jewish community, which he said controlled all the banks and newspapers. There was a general uproar.
President Gerald Ford personally rebuked him. Nevertheless, in spite of nationwide opposition, Ford renewed Brown's appointment as chairman of the joint chiefs for two years (1976 - 1978), citing his exemplary military record. In his second term, Brown, during a congressional hearing, blasted America's four closest allies: Great Britain, the Netherlands, Iran, and Israel. This time President Ford refused to reprimand him, determining that Brown was the Pentagon's problem.
The Department of Defense was silent on the subject. Several crises occurred during Brown's terms as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: the Cyprus civil war, which required the evacuation of all American and British civilians from the island; the capture by a Cambodian boat of the American merchant ship Mayaguez; and the evacuation of American citizens from Lebanon. In each one of these, Brown delegated responsibility to subordinates. In fact, when the news about the Mayaguez had reached the Pentagon, Brown was incommunicado, presumably fishing in the wilds of the Northwest Territory in Canada.
In June 1978, Brown completed his second term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In December of that year he died at Andrews Air Force Base.
Brown was diagnosed with prostate cancer and retired due to ill health on 21 June 1978. He died at the Malcolm Grow Air Force Hospital at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, on 5 December 1978, and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, not far from Creighton Abrams. He was survived by his wife and three children.
(Excerpt from Yarmouth, Nova Scotia: A Sequel to Campbell'...)
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Quotations:
During his term as Chairman, Brown commented on two occasions—firstly to a Duke University audience in October 1974, and then to a French reporter in 1976—that Israel was becoming a burden to The Pentagon and that he believed the reason for continual military aid was due to Jews having control over America's banks, newspapers and elected officials. His exact words were:
"It's so strong you wouldn't believe now. We have the Israelis coming to us for equipment. We say we can't possibly get the Congress to support that. They say, 'Don't worry about the Congress. We will take care of the Congress. ' Now this is somebody from another country, but they can do it. They own, you know, the banks in this country, the newspapers. Just look at where the Jewish money is. "
His early exposure to military life instilled in him a deep sense of order, purpose, loyalty, and commitment, and pride in the service.
Quotes from others about the person
General George F. Keegan felt that:
"[Brown's] relationship with General Abrams was the finest between a ground theater commander and his air subordinate that I have seen since 1941. There was complete trust, rapport, an end to gamesmanship between one service and another. It was clear from the outset that Abrams understood finally that in George Brown he had a personal friend whose life and resources were wholly committed to fulfilling the theater job and responsibility that Abrams had upon his shoulders. "
George Scratchley Brown married Alice Calhoun on May 19, 1942; they had three children.